Visual novel fans will tell you the best thing about playing a VN is becoming the protagonist. You make the choices, you see the results and you get to live the life of an anime main hero/heroine. Imagine if watching an anime using VR gave you that same immersion? Maybe you won’t be able to make choices like the VN games let you but you can witness the protagonist’s challenges/life through his/her eyes! That would be a truly neat experience and give anime a level of immersion never before seen!

If you’re a fan of Makoto Shinkai like we here are at Honey’s Anime then you know the beauty his team goes into when it comes to making backgrounds. Rain hits the pavement realistically and the lights from the city pierce into the sky in ways most anime can’t capture. One of our wishes in this world is to see the worlds Shinkai makes for ourselves and VR could help obtain that dream. While VR still struggles to capture realistic world settings—most VR games look okay but never amazing—in the future we could see graphics improve immensely in the VR world and that—in turn—could make for amazing anime backdrops. Imagine turning around in 360 degrees watching Kimi no Na wa and staring at that mountain vista rather than seeing a TV pan around. VR could truly bring us into our favorite anime and see the world all around!

We know what Otaku like since most of us here at Honey’s Anime are Otaku as well! We all love famous anime girls like Rem from Re: Zero kara Hajimeru Isekai Seikatsu or Makoto Tachibana from Free! Now imagine being able to not just love them from afar but up close and personal! VR might not give you the ability to feel their body on yours but it can give you the thoughts of embracing your favorite anime crushes in a way images just can’t do! Anime viewers would be able to don their VR headsets and pretend their running to their waifu/husband with open arms! Anime wars would become a bit more heated but we’d think that’s just a side-effect of being able to love an anime even more than before with VR!

There are dozens of you readers out there rolling your eyes already at the thought that anime being viewed in VR is a pipe dream. You’re probably also saying it can’t work in the end…right? Well folks, here are two examples of anime-related VR games that are both amazing and truly immerse you in the worlds they set. Spice and Wolf VR and Cyber Danganronpa VR: The Class Trials are two VR titles based on anime/video game franchises—respectfully—that give you a whole new experience in the VR realm. Both games let you dive into the worlds set by the series and experience the sensations of these series via the VR experience. Spice and Wolf VR feels like watching—and interacting—with an episode of the show, giving players a truly new outlook on how cute Holo is. Meanwhile, Cyber Danganronpa VR: The Class Trials lets you sit in on a trial and witness the insaneness of Monokuma and characters from the original game/anime! These are just small titles but they prove without a doubt that anime can be enjoyed in the VR sense in both an interactive sense and a visual one.